Senate Finance Committee demands answers from IRS by May 31

A day before the Senate Finance Committee’s hearing on the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups, the committee is calling on the IRS to disclose additional information and documents by the end of the month.

“Targeting applicants for tax-exempt status using political labels threatens to undermine the public’s trust in the IRS. Lack of candor in advising the Senate of this practice is equally troubling,” committee chairman Max Baucus and ranking member Orrin Hatch wrote in a letter to acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller Monday.

The top Democrat and Republican on the committee then listed 41 detailed requests for documents and information related to the IRS targeting to be provided to the committee no later than May 31.

The document request includes, in part, all questions and information requests the IRS used to question 501(c)(3)-(6) applicants from February 2010 to the present. Those questions include requests for donor lists, volunteer lists, financial support and relationships with political candidates.

They further request other terms the IRS has used to target applications for additional scrutiny, the circumstances of how the IRS learned of the targeting and the names of individuals involved in the decision to target tax-exempt organizations and what officials knew what when and what these officials did in response.

Their request also seeks to get to the bottom of the tax information leaked to outside organizations, whether any of the action taken against conservative groups seeking non-profit status was due to requests by member of Congress or other elected officials, and a slew of detailed requests for explanations, records, memos, and other documents.